Sòngshū 宋書
The Book of [Liú-]Sòng by 沈約 (Shěn Yuē, 441–513); Qing collation notes by 萬承蒼 (Wàn Chéngcāng).
About the work
The sixth of the Twenty-Four Histories, in 100 juǎn (10 jì, 30 zhì, 60 lièzhuàn) covering the LiúSòng dynasty (420–479). Composed under the Qí by Shěn Yuē 沈約 (then Bùbīng xiàowèi 步兵校尉 in the LiúSòng court but compiling under the Yǒngmíng era of Qí Wǔdì); presented in Yǒngmíng 5 (487), tenth month, with the zhì completed in 488. Shěn drew on the unfinished earlier work of Hé Chéngtiān 何承天 (370–447) and Xú Yuán 徐爰 (394–475), and substantially rewrote them.
Tiyao
By Shěn Yuē of the Liáng [actually Qí, but his career stretched into Liáng]. His particulars are in his Liáng shū biography. Shěn’s presentation memorial says the jì and zhuàn were finished, the zhì and biǎo together totalling 70 juǎn still to be completed and submitted later. The present text has jì, zhì, and zhuàn but no biǎo. Liú Zhījī’s Shǐtōng says the work is 10 jì, 30 zhì, 60 lièzhuàn, totalling 100 juǎn — no mention of biǎo. The Suí jīngjí zhì also gives 100 juǎn. Either the biǎo were lost before the Tang, or the present count of juǎn is the result of later editorial reordering.
By the zhì preface’s own statement, the eight categories of zhì, with additions and subtractions from earlier histories, are: Lǜlì, Lǐ, Yuè, Tiānwén, Wǔ xíng, Fúruì, Zhōujùn, Bǎiguān — Lǜlì never being divided into two mén. The present table of contents has juǎn 11 Zhìxù 志序, juǎn 12 Lì shàng, juǎn 13 Lì xià, but each juǎn’s detailed contents reads “Zhì 1 Lǜ Zhìxù, Zhì 2 Lì shàng, Zhì 3 Lì xià” — clearly the work of later editorial division, not Shěn’s original sequence. (Of the eight zhì, only Fúruì is purely supererogatory; Zhōujùn relies entirely on the Tàikāng dìzhì and on Hé Chéngtiān and Xú Yuán’s original, with much sloppiness on the dates of qiáozhì 僑置 — placeholders for displaced settlements — and on consolidations and divisions. The Lǐ zhì combines suburban and seasonal sacrifices, court audiences, and chariots-and-vestments into a single category, to economise on subdivisions; the Yuè zhì fully describes the eight tonal classes of instruments, the gǔchuī and náogē music chapters, with sound but no decipherable text rendered as one stop per phrase to preserve the rhythm. — These are particularly well-conceived. As to its tracing of earlier dynasties, Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì faulted Shěn for failure of dynastic limit; but Bān Gù added geographical material going back to the Nine Provinces, the Wǔ xíng zhì expounding the Hóngfàn — these all trace back to root, and there is precedent. Wèi and Jìn were both short, and the Sòng having succeeded them after little time inherited many institutions: Shěn’s detailed account of evolution is no great fault.
The Xú Yuán biography records the contemporary discussions on what to include — Shěn argued that Huán Xuán 桓元 etc. were Jìn rebels and not properly the affair of a later dynasty; Wú Yǐn and Xiè Hùn 謝混 were figures only of the previous court; Liú Yì and Hé Wújì 何無忌 had aimed at restoration, not at making the Sòng — all should be removed and ranged with the Jìn shū. Shěn’s clarity of historiographical doctrine is meticulous.
By the Northern Sòng the work had already lost much. The Chóngwén zǒngmù says one juǎn, the Zhào Lúnzhī biography, was missing; Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí says only Dào Yànzhī’s biography was missing. The present juǎn 46 has biographies of Zhào Lúnzhī, Wáng Yì, and Zhāng Shào, and only the Dào Yànzhī biography is missing — agreeing with Chén Zhènsūn’s text. The end-note “chén Mù” 臣穆 (i.e. the Northern-Sòng editor [Zhèng] Mù 鄭穆) records that this juǎn’s style matches the Nán shǐ and ends without lùn — likely not Shěn’s. Indeed by early Sòng this juǎn was already lost, and later compilers patched it from Gāo’s Xiǎo shǐ and the Nán shǐ to fill out the juǎn. Yet the Nán shǐ has the Dào Yànzhī biography intact — astonishing that the patcher chose not to use it. Similarly the Zhāng Shào biography end-appends his cousin’s son Zhāng Chàng using the Nán shǐ text — but the Sòngshū already has a Zhāng Chàng biography at juǎn 59, ignored. So the patcher was slovenly. Chén Mù is doubtless [Zhèng] Mù 鄭穆, who in the Jiāyòu era collated the Sòngshū.
Abstract
The Sòngshū covers the LiúSòng dynasty (420–479). Shěn Yuē 沈約 (441–513), one of the great literary figures of the Yǒngmíng 永明 era and the originator of the four-tone yīnyùn analytical system, compiled it under imperial commission of Qí Wǔdì 齊武帝 in Yǒngmíng 5 (487), incorporating the unfinished work of Hé Chéngtiān 何承天 (370–447, who had been Tàizǐ chéng under Sòng Wéndì) and Xú Yuán 徐爰 (394–475). Shěn substantially completed the jì and zhuàn in fourteen months of intensive work and submitted them in the tenth month of Yǒngmíng 5 (487); the eight zhì followed shortly after.
The work’s eight zhì — Lǜlì 律曆, Lǐ 禮, Yuè 樂, Tiānwén 天文, Wǔxíng 五行, Fúruì 符瑞, Zhōu jùn 州郡, Bǎi guān 百官 — are the longest and most elaborated of the southern-dynasties zhì and the principal source for the institutional, religious, musical, and geographical history of the Six-Dynasties south. The Yuè zhì in particular preserves with unique completeness the corpus of HànWèi yuèfǔ 樂府 lyrics, including the gǔchuī 鼓吹 and náogē 鐃歌 cycles. The Zhōu jùn zhì is the principal source for the system of qiáo zhōu jùn xiàn 僑州郡縣 (“displaced provinces and prefectures”) — the institution by which the southern court accommodated refugee populations from the lost north — though as the Sìkù compilers note, the dating of these qiáo placeholders is often imprecise.
The Sòngshū is also the source of two famous historiographical-literary essays: Shěn Yuē’s Xiè Língyùn zhuàn lùn 謝靈運傳論 (juǎn 67) — the foundational document of the four-tone yīnyùn theory and the Yǒngmíng tǐ 永明體 of “regulated” verse, and the Suǒlǔ zhuàn lùn 索虜傳論 — Shěn’s discussion of the northern non-Hàn polities, source for the term suǒlǔ 索虜 (“the bound captives”) used south-of-the-Yangtze for the northern Tuòbá Wèi.
The work’s juǎn 46 (Dào Yànzhī biography) was lost early; the present text is a Northern-Sòng patch by [Zhèng] Mù 鄭穆 (1018–1092) drawn from Gāo Sī’sūn’s 高似孫 Xiǎo shǐ and the Nán shǐ. The Wényuāngé text further carries Qing kǎozhèng by Wàn Chéngcāng 萬承蒼 (catalog meta gives extent as 36 juǎn of kǎozhèng).
The standard modern punctuated edition is the Zhōnghuá Shūjú Sòngshū (8 vols., 1974, ed. Wáng Zhòngluò 王仲犖); revised Xiūdìngběn in preparation.
Translations and research
No complete English translation. Notable partial translations: Achilles Fang, The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, contains some Sòngshū citations; Albert E. Dien, Six Dynasties Civilization (Yale, 2007); Charles Holcombe, In the Shadow of the Han (Hawai’i, 1994). On Shěn Yuē as historian and theorist of yīnyùn: Richard B. Mather, The Poet Shen Yüeh (441–513): The Reticent Marquis (Princeton, 1988); Mather, The Age of Eternal Brilliance: Three Lyric Poets of the Yung-ming Era (483–493), 2 vols. (Brill, 2003). Standard Chinese-language scholarship: Wáng Zhòngluò 王仲犖, WèiJìn NánBěicháo shǐ 魏晉南北朝史 (Shanghai Rénmín, 1979–80); Lú Bì 盧弼, Sòngshū jí jiào 宋書集校 (1958, partial); Tān Qīxiāng 譚其驤, “Sòngshū zhōu jùn zhì qiáo zhì jùn xiàn jiǎo bǔ” 宋書州郡志僑置郡縣校補 (in his Chángshuǐ jí 長水集, Rénmín, 1987).
Other points of interest
The Sòngshū is one of only two of the Twenty-Four Histories (with the Wèishū) composed by an author who was contemporary with the dynasty he described — and is therefore unusually rich in court memorials, edicts, and verbatim official documents. Its Yuè zhì preserves the full corpus of pre-Sòng yuèfǔ lyrics that would otherwise be lost; its Wǔxíng zhì is the principal source for omen-and-portent culture in the southern courts; its Lǐ zhì documents the development of the three-year mourning regulations that became standard in late-imperial lǐ practice.